A Guide for Interventional Radiology Experiments Using Swine

Abstract

In recent years, swine have been used increasingly in animal research conducted to evaluate interventional radiology (IVR) treatments, owing to the similar anatomies and physiologies between humans and swine. Other advantages of swine are their ease of handling, their easy availability from commercial suppliers, being relatively inexpensive, and generally in good health. For an experiment to be successful, it is particularly important to establish the objective of the IVR research and to create a detailed protocol. Because the research protocol cannot be modified in the laboratory after starting the experiments, the protocol should be thoroughly discussed with colleagues before starting the experiments to ascertain whether they can be performed successfully. In this report, we describe the anatomical and physiological characteristics of swine, breeding methods, anesthetic methods, angiographic imaging, and IVR research suitable for using swine.